Week 25: Traversing Taiwan
Week 25: Traversing Taiwan
An action-packed week in Taiwan courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Last week I was in Taiwan. I had the honour of being invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to join a group of 11 journalists to interrogate the country’s New Southbound Policy – as well as develop a better understanding of the country more broadly. This was my second trip to Taiwan this year, after spending 10 days in Taipei in January during their elections.
The New Southbound Policy has been one of the central foreign policy pillars of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) since the election of Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. It is designed to increase Taiwan’s economic and cultural links with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Its purpose is to not only to diversify Taiwan’s economy away from China (and it has been successful with this), but also to create a dense web of interactions within the region that will lead these countries to see their own interests in Taiwan’s independence. With the hope that this will create enough diplomatic pressure on China to prevent it from invading.
All of the journalists within the group were from New Southbound Policy target countries, with the exception of one American and a journalist from Palau – a country which maintains official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
It was a hectic schedule, with meetings organised with officials from the Office of Trade Negotiations, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Education, the National Immigration Agency, the Tourism Administration, as well as the think-tank Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research. Each provided an overview of their work and official documents, but substantial time was also given to questions from the group (with lots of furious note-taking).
Alongside these meetings with various ministries and agencies, we also had the honour of a having a discussion over lunch with the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Chung-kwang Tien. Which afforded an opportunity to discuss the current major foreign policy issues for Taiwan. The deputy minister was particularly forthright about Nauru’s recent abrupt decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China – calling Nauru “fickle” and “unpredictable”. To be fair to Nauru, after its phosphate deposits have been exhausted, and the mining of this which has left it with almost no arable land, the country now has very limited sources of income. The prospect of Australia closing the regional processing facility on the island meant that Nauru had to go searching for new revenue streams. China has deep pockets for those willing to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing, and so was an obvious card for Nauru to play. Although we will see whether this will be a sustained investment in Nauru, or whether money that might dry up after Beijing has got what it wanted.
Aside from meeting with officials, the program also involved several cultural experiences designed to provide a better picture of the country as a whole – as well as being fed ridiculous amounts of food (I gained 1.5kgs during the week). Given my love of public transport, a highlight for me was the High Speed Rail trip from Taipei to Kaohsiung to visit the Kaohsiung Music Centre – part of a new waterfront development – and then making our way down to the Kenting National Park on the island’s southernmost tip.
There was also a visit to the National Palace Museum upon returning to Taipei.
The National Palace Museum is an extraordinary institution, not only due to the gorgeous items on display, but for how its existence came into being. As the Kuomintang forces were fleeing mainland China due to their defeat in the Chinese Civil War they had the remarkable foresight to smuggle almost 700,000 pieces spanning 8,000 years of history across the strait to Taiwan. Much of these works were initially moved out of museums into various and ever-changing locations to prevent them from falling into the hands of the invading Japanese forces in the 1930s. However, with the subsequent civil war following Japan’s defeat in World War II the works faced another threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Although the CCP now claims to be the inheritor and true guardian of the entirety of Chinese history, this wasn’t always the case. As the Cultural Revolution sought to create a Year Zero in China, Mao targeted The Four Olds - Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits – resulting in the destruction of a vast number of Chinese antiques and artworks. The works smuggled out of China to Taiwan were saved from this ideological fervour. And today any potentially ideological shifts that the CCP might have – something increasingly likely now the party have once again submitted to single figure.
But the National Palace Museum also creates a certain dissonance within modern Taiwan. While a new Taiwanese identity has been forged that is distinct from China, the museum also centres Taiwan as the guardian of Chinese history. But the responsibility for this history is far too great for Taiwan to abandon.
Yet a struggle over Taiwanese history – not just Chinese history – is also something that is prominent within Taipei itself. A visit to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial demonstrated that Taiwan’s own less-than-pleasant history since 1949 is still a central feature.
Chiang led the retreat out of mainland China, relocating the Republic of China government to Taiwan. Here he set himself up as a dictator, and built an extraordinary number of statues of himself (many of which have – hilariously – been moved to a single park). The most prominent is within an otherwise beautiful central square. Which also houses that National Theatre and National Concert Hall.
Chiang’s dictatorship (and two of his successors) presided over an era known as the White Terror – the period of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1992 where those who the regime considered were attempting to “subvert” their authority were imprisoned and brutalised. Making the Chiang memorial a contentious feature.
To demonstrate that the Taiwanese government is open and honest about this period we were also taken to the Human Rights Museum. Created in 2018 the museum is designed to document the abuses of the White Terror era. Here we spoke with Chia-wen Yao who was imprisoned in 1979 for his advocacy for democratic reforms. Upon release he went on to become the chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Despite the Kuomintang’s (KMT) brutal past, it should be acknowledged that they have done something incredibly rare and laudable – relinquishing their power as a single party-state without violence, and reinventing themselves as a democratic party. When I was in Taiwan in January for the elections, upon losing the presidential election to the DPP, the KMT candidate immediately conceded defeat and congratulated now-President Lai. Which is more than can be said for some other political parties in longer-standing democracies (no prizes for guessing who I am talking about).
Although the KMT’s current attempts in legislature to hobble the power of the presidency may indicate that the party hasn’t totally overcome its past (something it looks like the courts will decide).
Of course, I was under no illusions about what was the purpose of this trip. The Taiwanese government are looking to cultivate journalists who will be able to use their platforms to write (positively) about Taiwan. Although there has been no pressure to do so. It is more of an implicit hope on their behalf.
However, the trip has provided me with a lot of material and I have several pieces planned out. Not all of it glowing, but I have a genuine sympathy for Taiwan’s unique status and how it navigates the constant harassment from its authoritarian neighbour.
This unique status means that as conventional diplomatic routes are unavailable (although extensive back channels are utilised) Taiwan instead relies more heavily on its soft power. Although Taiwan has lost nine countries that previously formally recognised it since 2016, it arguably has greater international support at the moment as China’s aggression has become more pronounced and the devastating global effects of a potential invasion of Taiwan become recognised.
But this international support also has come from a highly sophisticated foreign policy from Taiwan – an ability to get itself noticed and cultivate empathy. They’ve made friendliness and hospitality their national ethos – to contrast with its neighbour – and most importantly demonstrated the ability to project trust. Trust is more powerful than military might or economic power, it plays a far more substantial role than the meeting of political leaders. It is the platform on which stable and flourishing human relationships are built. We may not recognise it when we have it, but we certainly do when its gone.
Trust is also something that authoritarianism cannot comprehend. To authoritarians order can only be created by the fist – as their emotional turbulence can only understand coercive control. If the CCP is this fist, then Taiwan has by necessity needed to be an open hand extended in friendship. The country has made an extraordinary transformation from its own government-by-fist to a high-trust society (domestically as well as internationally) in a veryshort period of time.
Trips like this are not how I usually like to travel. It felt a little bit too much like a package tour for my liking – with tight schedules and being bussed between locations – rather than using the metro as my preferred way to travel. But then again the opportunity gave me access to officials and to information that I usually wouldn’t have access to, as well as experiences aspects of the country that I wouldn’t seek out (or afford to seek out) were I to travel my usual way. Hopefully in the coming weeks I’ll have some articles in the press drawn from the information I gathered.